Mma Potokwane saw them from her office, and she rushed out to meet them just as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and the younger apprentice arrived in the truck. Then Dr Moffat arrived, with his wife, in his pick-up truck, and Mma Potokwane immediately seized him and led him off to look at one of the children who had developed a high fever and was being watched over by her housemother. Mrs Moffat stayed with Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi and together they made their way to the spot under a wide jacaranda tree where two of the housemothers were dispensing heavily-sugared tea from a very large brown tea-pot. There was cake too, but it was not free. Mma Ramotswe bought a slice for all of them and they sat down on stools and drank the tea and ate the cake while further spectators arrived. Then, after half an hour or so, they heard the distant drone of an aircraft engine and the children began to squeal with excitement, pointing at the sky to the west. Mma Ramotswe looked up, straining her eyes; the sound was clear enough now, and yes, there it was, a small plane, white against the great empty sky, much higher than she had imagined it would be. How small we must all look from up there, she thought; and poor Charlie, for all his faults, now just a tiny dot in the sky, a tiny dot that would come tumbling down to the hard earth below.

“I shouldn’t have asked him to do this,” she said to Mma Makutsi. “What if he’s killed?”

Mma Makutsi put a reassuring hand on Mma Ramotswe’s forearm. “He won’t be,” she said. “These things are very safe these days. They check everything two or three times.”

“But it still might not open. And what if he freezes with shock and doesn’t pull the cord? What then?”

“His instructor will be jumping with him,” soothed Mma Makutsi. “He would dive down and pull the cord for him. I saw a picture in the National Geographic of that being done. It is very easy for these people.”

They became silent as the plane passed overhead. Now they could see the markings underneath the wings and the undercarriage, and then the opening door and a figure and a blur of shapes. Suddenly there were two little packages, but packages with arms and legs flailing about in the rushing wind, and some of the children shrieked and pointed upwards. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked up too, and gulped, imagining that it could have been him up there, and remembering that disturbing dream. Mma Ramotswe closed her eyes, and then opened them again, and still the figures were falling against the empty sky, and she thought: his parachute is not going to open, and she clutched at Mma Makutsi who had muttered something under her breath, a prayer perhaps.